Once upon a time, just over twenty years ago the world was full of environmentally aware television programs on television for children. Maybe you have seen the re-runs of shows like "The Smoggies", "The Raccoons", "Seasame Street", "Captain Planet and the Planeteers", "Bill Nye the Science Guy" (that's 90's but . . .), and wow I'm getting so nostalgic here I actually really miss these shows. As well as movies like Troll in Central Park (if I remember it correctly) and Fern Gully. Or maybe you have never heard of any of those. I watched those shows avidly, along with several dozens more. As a small child, I remember watching in complete silence and stillness the shows from National Geographic, the science shows on Television Ontario (TVO), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports on pollution and water waste.
When I was in grade one my class put on a pageant all about saving the world. We sang songs and acted out good behavior towards the Earth, generic things like turning the lights and taps off and not littering. We made posters about "Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle", "Want Not, Waste Not" and information about water conservation and management. This went on every year until about grade six, these poster makings and environment awareness pageants and school spirit days. Then, it was like all of the sudden, nobody cared anymore. Shows like "The Raccoons", which by this point were no longer on the Saturday morning lineup or afterschool blocks, I watched on the low budget French channel (Channel 61 on the aerial in Southern Ontario, never caught the station) that was really fuzzy. It was the last of the shows of that kind I remember watching, and when it was no longer even on the French channel it faded from my mind.
In fact, even in Geography class the idea of environmental awareness had fizzled out. In grade nine I watched a documentary with my class from the early nineties I believe, on the soft wood lumber business in British Columbia. It was a throw back because, who clear cut these days? It was 2001 . . . surely nobody still clear cut. We didn't even talk about it; we watched it on a day the teacher was away and then the next day didn't even discuss it.
In grade ten science we watched a very late 70's show on the effects of pollution and carbon emissions from factories on the envrionment and then read a study on how much Canada had improved its air quality since then. I never thought much of global warming again after that. Sure, occasionally it came up and it was and is, a problem I believe to really exist but. It's hard to put into words what I mean, but there is a general apathy about the whole thing.
This year, I started to wonder why, these educational shows died off and made room for shows like "Beyblade" and "Brats Divas" and the other general mindless drivel on the television these days. Obviously just because I was watching television in the late 80's and early 90's doesn't make my television veiwing any better than the quality of shows on today, it was still cartoons, it was still violent, and it still depicted women in a sexist light, but it had morality and purpose. It was about team work, almost resembling say socialism and communism for shows like "Care Bears" and "The Smurfs". It was about being informed, GI Joe will tell you, "And now you know, and knowing is half the battle!" and learning something new. "Schoolhouse Rock" taught you math, politics, and grammar in such a fun sing along kind of way and it too said "Knowledge is Power!" A lot of shows were based on science and understanding. Ignorance and apathy didn't exist in most of these shows. For a short while, it didn't exist in my age group either . . .
Does anyone remember "The Magic School Bus" books? The books later became a show, I would bet a lot of Whyvillians watched that show. Those were good books. They got you just enough interested in science to pick up a non fiction book (that's what we did when we were young). We read books. We didn't have Wikipedia. Heck, I don't even think I knew about Wikipedia until I was in grade like, 11 or 12, isn't that scary? Books -- you know what a book is right?
We would go to the library and go to the card catalogue and we would look up in the reference section books on things that had sparked out interest from these other books or television shows. We would look at the pictures and read the text and then move on to the next one. This is where you get to say, "Jeez BabyPowdr, you're a geek", and I won't stop you because being a geek, dork, or nerd is not a bad thing. Remember, ignorance might be bliss, slavery might be freedom, and war might be peace, but knowledge is always power. Always.
So what happened? In that void between let's say around 1996 and 2007 (11 years holy moly), where environmental issues died off the radar -- what was going on? What instead, where the children born in the 90's learning about from television shows? What books were they being read? Had the social conscious trend gone completely out of vogue?
The way I see it, and remember I am just one person in Ontario, it happened like this.
1995, when I was 8 years old. Was I really only 8? Yes, I was. Mega awesome pop bands came about and this really really cool show called "Sailormoon". Suddenly, it was like us girls needed to be super awesome looking in fly jeans and platform shoes and belly shirts. Why was "Sailormoon" important? It was the dawn for the Asian Sensation Anime Wave. You might know shows such as "Pokemon", "Digimon", "Beyblade", "Yu Gi Oh", "Dragon Ball Z", "Gundamwing Z" (or X, I dunno), "Cowboy Bebop", "Hello Kitty," you get the idea right?
All of the sudden in the late 90's (like 1998-ish) there was a flood of anime cartoons from Japan. Hey, not a bad thing I loved them too, I am just saying that between that and the new WB and the Disney Saturday Morning and then the Disney Channels, TV changed a LOT. Does anyone remember what a Nano was? Or a GiGi Pet? Those fun little drive-your-mum-up-the-wall keychains that were "real" electronic pets. Here is where slavery becomes freedom, becoming a slave to the corporate fat cats. New video game systems were coming out like Dreamcast, Playstation, and N64, followed with PS2, Game Cube, and the Xbox. There were handhelds like Gameboy Colour, and Gameboy Advance which were suddenly small enough to ACTUALLY be portable. When the year 2000 hit, most people I knew finially owned a computer of their own and had the Internet on it. Which suddenly meant that instead of tv watching, playing out of doors and reading books, people were online.
In short, I blame society for the change because in the mid 90s you had the emblem of "Girl Power" being spoken about by five very attractive females, and the other pop tarts who were rocking the charts and defining society's norms for the way women should appear in public and in the media. There was an adverstisement period where models like Kate Moss glorified illegal substances and anorexically thin frames. The focus on little girls was to be beautiful and hip. Boys got told it was alright to be homosexual and to push society to tolerate people for the way they are while macho things thrown at them from violent videogames and violent cartoons to "manly" toys and sports. Any decade has this, it's the way the world works but the 90's was a totally new kind of brutal double standard.
So. In an even shorter sense the advertising world created this image for young people that we need to be C.R.A.P. (cool, rich, awesome, and popular), and young forever. What do you do to achieve this? Obviously buy every new product they are selling. Now the world has a group of people 20 to 25 who are consumer crazy and buy everything. They care not for the trivial wars and disputes of the world unless it's affecting their ability to consume and be greedy. Capitalism has even won over the younger generations further still.
Another thing won over by capitalism is the scientific research industry. There are scientists essentially for hire by the government and large corporations, such as Exxon Mobile, that will prove whatever you want them to, for the right price. These same scientists who are fighting now that global warming is nothing more than "climate change" are the same scientists hired by the tobacco companies in the 80's to prove that smoking DOES NOT cause cancer. In the 80's, these scientists concluded that there was no link between smoking and getting cancer, nor are cigarettes addictive and nor do they cause any other health problems.
Hold Up. I said up there that smoking DOESN'T cause cancer? Yes I did. Think about that. 20 years ago, these people of the scientific profession, with Ph.Ds in various areas of science, concluded that there was no reason to believe that smoking tobacco caused cancer.
Do you believe that smoking causes cancer, lung diease, causes strokes and heart attacks along with other coronary issues as well as mouth cancer, gum diseases, low blood pressure, emphezema, and that smoking IS more addictive than cocaine or heroin?
Don't say, well we know that it does, because maybe, maybe it's a lie that over 450,000 people die each year in Canada from smoking related things (source: A Benson and Hedges cigarette pack, but the graph says no date on it), maybe . . . it's just a hoax?
There is such thing as persuasion. It can be done in advertising and in linguistics used in presidential speeches, it's when someone puts something in a way you can't or don't want to argue with. Or a way you won't question it. Take for instance, global warming. That sounds bad. Really bad. But, climate changes, well those have been happening on their own for centuries, it's how the Earth works, that's not so scary right? It's in the way you word things. If you get a chance, look in to the Flat Earth Society or the Moonlanding Hoax. Those groups of people have a beautiful grasp of the English language and warp facts and figures into a delicious tale that when you are done reading what they believe, you almost believe it too. Or you might.
Isn't this brainwashing you might ask. Well, maybe. Propoganda's main purpose is to get people to all believe in one thing and be behind the cause, no matter how ridiculous. Look at people like Hitler or cult leaders. When you look at what they believe in, you say "That's bad and that's wrong and I don't agree." If you had heard Hitler's speeches in his time, I believe you would have been swayed.
How many of you really believe war is a good thing? How many of you want to join the army because you think it's heroic and patriotic? How many of you, really think that what you want to do, is enlist to be fodder for the "terrorists" of other nations' bombs and guns, because you want to grow up to kill people as a profession? Nobody wants to grow up to kill people. That's insane. But that's what the army and marines do. They kill "bad" guys. They kill other kids from other countries, who just like them wanted to be a hero and kill "bad" guys.
So how on Earth does the army manage to get SO many people to sign up? I've seen the US Forces commercials. They look like the army is fun, like the army is hanging out with your buddies playing cards, climbing mountains, helping children and riding in air planes then jumping out of them. Sure, I don't doubt you do that stuff in the army. The army pays for your school and pays you pretty well as far as I understand after you have served your time defending the country. A lot of people never even have to fire their guns. Do you see what I mean? We don't like war, we want peace. So, we're told by fighting wars we can bring peace because we're the good guys, and everyone knows the good guys always win. Who doesn't want to be a winner? Join the army and you get all this cool free stuff, attraction from the opposite sex, world travel, and to be a winner. With perks like that you start to forget the real meaning of the cause.
So back to the global warming. We believed scientific evidence was saying that global warming was real. Well, then someone had to go and say that we are unsure, and even the scientists have their doubts. This opened up room for a debate. Suddenly other scientists are contradicting the finds of the first scienticts. Just like any scientific debate where people don't want to see the truth, like say when they were fighting over the Earth being round. Nobody believed that, to them, the Earth was flat. Now, that seems like a crazy crazy idea. How could people think that? I guess it was because it was all they knew. Before, all we knew was global warming was happening and it was caused by our emissions from burning carbon and oil. Now, it's been reworded to climate change and we know the Earth has gone through several natural climate changes. So what are the scientists arguing about? Whether or not, carbon emissions are causing this.
Funded by, Exxon Mobile, a very large corporation, and also the wealthist in the world, scientists are proving that carbon emissions are not blocking in the suns rays. Greenhouse gases simply don't exist. It seems too crazy to believe doesn't it? This happens all the time and the only people with the power to do anything about it is us, the general public.
The governments (both American and Canadian) are hiding things from you, rewording and twisting facts and figures to make it look like this is not a problem. I want to tell you this and I want you to really understand this. There will not be a button to press that will undo the damage done between today, and the day the world is in serious trouble. Most people could care less about global warming because it doesn't affect them. They're the older generation and even people my age, but you are younger and there are younger kids still.
And what exactly does this have to do with 80's cartoons you might ask, well, I think you already know the answer.
-BP
